Sergeant Pt1
by Gloomhippy
Summary: This is a story of bitter conflict between the Mushroom Kingdom and Boswer's army, and how one man lays waste to them all...
1. Introduction

**Hello, I go by the name of Gloomhippy, and this story is based on Paper Mario games I've played. Those of you who are fans of the series, I hope that this will make you very happy. **

Our story begins…with a floating castle.

The castle floated several miles above the crashing oceans. Chains wrapped upon the stones like delicate lace, and reflected the moonlight like the darkest ivy. I, alone, stand out on the paved balcony, bathing in the light that nearly turned my dark uniform white.

I stared upon the well-lit cities in front of me, deep in thought. Within the hour, the castle would descend upon this town, and I would join his comrades in ruining the city streets. Like a plague of locusts, the army would demolish buildings, capture natives, and bring the sad civilization to it's end.

I knew this, all that I was about to do, and I opened my arms out, as though to embrace the dark. I am the sergeant. I am the commander of Boswer's army. As the troops gathered at the gates to begin their eve of destruction, packed with swords and lancets and a mass war hysteria, I, Sergeant remember what I'm fighting for. Tonight's procedure was fairly routine. Boswer's counsel and seer, Kammy, had picked up across an item known as a Destiny Spear. Powered by the same magic as the castle above the sea, the spear allowed the holder to make one wish, no matter how great or small.

The spear's hiding place, a small area near Rougeport, was easy to come across, but the army too large and the castle too high-profile to land anywhere near there without attracting powerful military attention. So rather than wait for the ship to land, the army was to perform a mass paratrooper assault on Rougeport and silence as many citizens as possible.

Almost as if on cue, the first seven soldiers jumped from the floodgates, and I let out a sharp intake of breath, and dove with an eagle-like velocity toward his target, armed only with a dagger and a powerful frame. After 12 seconds of free-fall, I pulled on the cord and let myself be carried by a sudden western wind toward the port. A lone Toad, who was working at the harbor, looked up and saw, to his horror, over one hundred falling black parachutes-a symbol of Boswer's loyal servicemen. It was only when I landed, and I looked in his pale face, that he understood the blade in his throat before it even came to him. 13 of us walked to the main square and set off a huge fire with the hanging area there, to drag out any people upstairs with smoke. A young girl came out, and then the rampage began. The entire town was wrecked. People were killed, women were raped, and almost all the houses were made to crumble to the floor. After 45 minutes, Rougeport was dead, and dust billowed in the morning air.


	2. The BreakIn

I was surprised at the lack of the army's influence on the city. There were no soldiers, except for a very dedicated militia, who I quickly slaughtered. The only real combat we received was from the inner city gang lords. The battle, like many others, was incredibly incoherent, with confused fighting between an Italian mob group and a scummy, lower-class gang. Eventually, however, almost everyone was wiped out, and those who weren't could not physically or mentally support themselves for much longer. I couldn't concentrate on this for long, however, because the castle would land on the area soon enough, and news of our arrival would eventually reach Rougeport's powerful allies.

The men used in this operation were very agile and right for the job. Within 5 minutes of the castle's contact, they had already set up enough boats to support 25 people. The rest of the army would have to hide underground and hope for the best, because there just wasn't enough time to get them all aboard. The western wind was still blowing and got us to the destination just as the castle let out a dull thudding across the sunrise as it hit the blood-soaked city.

The Destiny Spear was well known around the wiser circles we interrogated. Luckily, it remained in a high-class security museum and was too shrouded in mystery for anyone to show interest in it as an actual object. I, however, had no misconceptions about it's true nature. 5 of our stronger men and I went inside and poked around. The entrance of two bookshelves opened up to a circular room, with the sword directly in the middle of the area. The entire museum had a dark red tint to it from the young sunrise, and reveled a shadow of someone standing by himself downstairs, looking above at us with eyes filled with a focused malice.

Two of us in the front went down first, thanks to the old man's POW Block. The other three took him on head-first and I dove down to the glass encasement. This man had no intention of going down that easily, because he grabbed one of my Hammer Brother's hammers and kicked the rest into the trio's face. He jumped over to me off the stairs and hammered my stunned face in, hard.

_Something is seriously wrong here_, I realize. _Despite his anger, this man is very old and shouldn't be able to hit that hard_. Couldn't worry about that now, though. I wasn't letting him hit me while he was down. I rolled out of his line of fire, reached out my dagger, and stabbed him in the chest. Now I had to find a place for his body. Before I could, I noticed a necklace on him with a bright yellow medallion.

**_The Lucky Star._**


	3. The Success

I am the Sergeant, and I am extremely angry and confused.

I'm walking several steps away from the pack, and everyone's doing their best to stay on my thinning good side. The Lucky Star. The last time I saw it, Mario had defeated Bowser with a monstrous power I had never seen before. The only way that old man could have gotten hold of it is if Mario had come to him personally. That… meant that Mario already foresaw this operation before we even set foot on ground. He couldn't invade the castle just yet, I not yet ready to face him till the operation is complete. I look at the medallion in my hand, and ball it up in my fist to the point where you could hear stress cracks in it, then shoved it into my pocket to see if it would be of any use later.

While one of my men gets the boat ready, I look over toward the castle. That's when I noticed a flag in front of the entrance. The Mushroom Kingdom flag. I am having an extremely bad day, so I wait to control myself before announcing, "Troops! Get onboard as quickly as you can! **Mario is at the base!**" The men, within seconds, go absolutely insane and push and shove off each other for their salvation. Suddenly, a bang goes off and I hear screams of agony behind me. I look up and see the cause of their agony. Somehow, someway, Mario had gotten hold of Bullet Bill missiles!

It takes us seven minutes to hit shore, and I run to the battle like one freshly reawakened from the dead. I get into the main square, and come across an impressive scene. Mario awaits me, strapped with a strong mallet and standing on the scorched remains of the hanging area in front of the castle entrance, thankfully, still securely closed. With him stands Princess Peach, and she still withholds her radiance, even though she's showing signs of her impregnation 7 months ago. Her stomach was hatching the young new prince to arrive in their family as she stood there.

Mario approaches me before anyone else. Before attacking me, he has one of his comrades, a female Goomba, spurt out "Name: Sergeant. HP: 60. Weaknesses--". I cut her off before she finishes-literally. I'm not about to let her read me like a book. Mario jumps at me, with his hammer ready to fire. But before he plunges, I grab his hammer in midstrike and stop it, then kick him clear in the stomach, kicking him off the hammer and striking him into the water.

I use the hammer to knock on the entryway and yell "Kammy! Open the gate! While we still have time!" The gate slides down and all the troops enter the castle swiftly. But before I go in, I look at Peach… and then I get a terrible idea. Yes, I know she's pregnant, but it's not like Boswer's ever raised a cruel hand to her anyway. I shut the door quickly enough to save the castle from further endangerment and we're ready for takeoff.


	4. Capture

I manage to get into the upper lobby before anyone else can notice Peach around my arm. My room has a white theme, very sparse, with a hard bed next to the window and my outfits in the closet next to the bed. I sit her down. She looks angry and ready to kill, but that look leaves immediately when I aim my dagger, still with blood on it and spell out S-C-R-E-A-M A-N-D Y-O-U D-I-E with an honest look on my face. I then exit the room and go into Boswer's personal room.

Boswer, it turns out, was still sleeping soundly in his bedroom during the entire mission. He awakens once I approach the bed, as if by clockwork. "Uggg…morning, Sergeant. Got anything good for me today?" I'm not in the mood to start any joyful banter, I've had a hard day. So I wordlessly pull out the Destiny Spear. "Great!" he exclaims. "You're one of the best military personnel I've had, you realize that? I- oh, Kammy! Look at this!" I look behind me and see Kammy out in the lobby, with another one of her trademark staffs. She takes a quick glance at the sparkling translucent spike, gave a nod of approval, and wandered off. Boswer sighed and muttered about placing it somewhere safe and went out the back door to the balcony.

When I came back in, Peach was sitting to herself, looking down on the floor. I sat down on the bed with her and just sat there, trying to make some semblance of what to do with myself for the evening. Suddenly, she murmured "What is your name?" This confused me for a moment, but then I remembered how much she'd been captured before, so I guess she was used to this. "My name is Sergeant." I stated. She walked over to the window and looked out on the vast sun-soaked ocean. "Well, Sergeant," she asked, "shouldn't you be taking me to Boswer or whoever?" I ponder about this for a moment, and then I realize something. "No.", I say to her, "I'm not taking you to him." This seems to startle her, and before she can respond, I say, "I have to go-business.", and I'm out the door.

I'm splashing water on my face to wake myself up in the bathroom. The implications of what I've just done hit me square in the face, and now I'm worried. Capturing Peach was a seriously bad idea. Now I have to figure out what I'm going to do with her. The whole Mushroom Kingdom will have news of her kidnapping, and pretty soon news of this will reach us by the time we land next. What am I going to do now? And for that matter, what made me kidnap her in the first place?


	5. Peach and Sergeant

That evening, I tried to make my gathering of extra food as discreet as possible. If I was going to keep this a secret, I was going to have to support her child as much as possible. When I got up from the table with a full plate, the men cast a few stares. "Just feeding the slaves." I said. In fact, this wasn't entirely untrue, since we had plenty of slaves from today's conquest in the holding room. My route included the intricate passageway that led up from the holding room to the lower lobby, then up to the upper lobby, and then my room. Peach was sleeping gently, the way you'd expect a princess to sleep. I ended up snagging my foot on one of the loose stones in the room, and the noise I made getting to the table to set the food down woke her up.

Wordlessly, she looked at the meal in front of her. Five pieces of tender roast meat with something resembling creamed corn. She sat up and got a fork and knife. Before she ate, she asked me, "Why did you kill all those people?" "Because they were doomed anyway. The castle would've flattened them.", I said. "But you could've evacuated them and then there'd been no body count." I let out a heavy sigh. She was right. Because of that massacre, we will probably be under attack for some time. But I already knew that when I did it. I had a reason for my destruction.

"Peach" I said solemnly, "look out at that city. What do you see? Because I'm certain you don't see the same thing I do." I paused, and then said, "To me, people are weak and flimsy. Even when I was young, I knew I was evil. When I wanted, I could make anyone bend to me. If I wanted to frighten them, or hurt them, they'd run away, crying and quivering, even grown men, and all the people were always the same, and I could bend their lives to my whim, like controlling the hapless wind. I hate all the people down there, and any sort of people are all the same, weak and stupid. That's why I killed them." She looks at me, and says, "So, I suppose Boswer is different from them." I turn around, and sit down on the bed with her and say "No, he's just like them. Not in body, but in spirit, he is weak. Look at him, he even needed that stupid Destiny Spear just to feel good about himself."

"But I stay with him for one reason: this castle. It's my nest from the world. Whenever I got sick of the world, I discovered his castle. That's why I'm his sergeant, not because I like his cause, but because I want to stay here, away from the world." She reflects on this, and then looks at her growing child inside her. "What about Mario? Isn't he strong?" I reflect on this, and say, "He is strong, but he's too strong nowadays. Ever since he became a military power." "What do you mean?", she asked. "Think about it." I say, "Why do you think he brought you to the castle landing even when he knew it could endanger his child?" I waited a few moments for her to say something, but I looked over at her and she was silently crying. And then she said, "Sergeant, I'll let you in on a little secret. Mario has no child."

I sat on the bed a little while longer, watching the world outside turn to black. The castle blended with the rest of the world, and I shifted into an endless tunnel of sleep.


	6. The Attack

I woke out of my slumber to a heavy barrage of gunfire. There was nothing but white smoke in the room when I opened my eyes. I got up with a start. Peach was nowhere to be found. We were being attacked by Bullet Bills, and now I had to operate the main guns on the lower lobby, because I had the only key to it-but where was Peach?

The main guns did a good number on the enemy, who turned out to be another Mushroom Kingdom brigade, armed with a custom Bullet Bill system that filled them with tear gas. After 5 minutes, combat was over. There would be more of those kinds of random attacks, thanks to my mutiny. And sooner or later, the troops would realize that they were trying to get Peach back. If we landed, news would arrive of her kidnapping, and then I don't know what would happen.

After combat, I looked all over the castle, seeing if I needed to silence anyone who may have saw her. I found her in the middle of the secret labyrinth I'd used last night. I ran up to her and nearly yelled out, "DID ANYONE SEE YOU?", and then, through clenched teeth, "Did anyone see you?" And she jerked away from me, saying "Leave me alone! I could've been killed!" and ran back upstairs to my room before I could respond. A mood swing. I went to the bathroom to rinse off my face, knowing the crisis was over. And then I take a look in the mirror.

Actually, to tell you the truth, I'm not specifically a handsome man. I'm completely bald-been bald ever since my birth. My face also looks very old. I'm only 45, but my face seems to be 5 steps ahead of me. I always dress in armor, even when I'm feeling casual. And, from what I see in the mirror, I also need a shave. I might as well blow a few minutes in here and wait for Peach to stop crying. I'd worry about where she is, but I'm not keeping myself on edge for the time she's here, or people will notice. I take a deep breath and exhale, as one usually does, when they're deciding what to do next.

By now, you're probably thinking that I love her. I don't. When I kidnapped her, I didn't do it with love in my heart, or with anything, for that matter. Why did I do it? The answer still eludes me. But I imagine the answer would come with time, which I'll have a lot of until Boswer gets tired of his new toy. Now I had to figure out what to do for her breakfast. Before I can, though, I hear a static noise in the room beside the bathroom. I come in and check on the sound. I walk in to find 14 or 15 soldiers, along with Boswer, sitting down in front of a radio, attempting to tune to a proper station.


	7. Announcment

One soldier looks over at me and yelps. "Oh, er, hey, Sergeant. How are things on your neck of the woods?" "…quit trying to act coy, soldier. Why is that thing on the ship?', I respond. "Give me a break." he says. "I found it in one of the buildings underground." I looked over at Boswer, to see if he approved of this, but he seemed deep in thought. One of them turned the knob on the radio all the way to the right, and an announcer's voice came on.

"…_welcome back to MKES, where we have just spoken to a Royalty official. Our Lady, Princess Peach, who was last seen running off from a safe zone, has been deemed a missing person. During a mood swing at 4:50 AM last morning, she had stormed out of the safe zone, and is nowhere to be found. Survivors of the calamity at Rougeport yesterday stated seeing a woman in a pink dress several minutes before Bowser's ship crash-landed on the coast. Mario was unavailable for comment. We will continue to stay on air for as long as possible…" _

No one in the room so much as breathed after the announcement. Bowser's jaw had partially dropped, and he shuffled out of the room like a zombie. No one said anything, but I could feel a sense of paranoia in the room. We had, after all, been big enemies of the Kingdom, but if Boswer hadn't done anything, who did? This had gone from bad to worse since I woke up this morning. If suspicions ran high enough, these people could tear each other apart and destroy my beloved castle from the inside out. I had to talk with Peach before it was too late.

"You want me to do what now!" she said, nearly dropping her food. "Peach, work with me here. But yes, that what I want you to do." We were having a conference in my room, and I had just bought her spare eggs, still hot. "Let me get this straight. Yesterday, you said you weren't taking me to Boswer. Why are you changing your mind now?" I looked down on the floor. I had no choice. Once I turned her to him, she would have to say that she got lost and scared and tried to hide in here. It was the only way to divert attention away from me.

"No.", she said simply. I looked over at her, and she continued, "I may not know much, but I know that I'm not turning myself in. When you captured me, you didn't consider any of this happening. And now I'm just expected to sit here and let you walk off scot-free? Nun-uh. I'm going to make you suffer for a little while." I grabbed her hand and tried to drag her to Boswer, but as soon as I got her to the door, she said, "If you take me to him, I'll simply tell him what you did, and then your precious castle is forever out of your reach."

I sat her back down on the bed, and then back away softly. Then I say, "How dare you! Do you realize that I could've done anything to you in this room?" She said nothing, so I said, "I'll play along. You've got the upper hand. We'll keep this up and I'll enjoy it. I will enjoy keeping you here and I won't let you leave. Now, go downstairs and take a shower. The next time I come back up here, you better be clean, or I won't feed you."


	8. End of Part 1

Bowser's door is partially open, a bad sign that he wanted attention. When I walked in, he was sitting in front of a chart, with 3 marks near the Rougeport area. He looked over at me with the most haggard eyes I'd ever seen. "Bowser, are you OK?" I asked. He looked back on the map and said nothing. And then he spoke.

"Sergeant, do you have any idea how long Mario and I have been enemies? I was trying to kill him before the Kingdom even became a central power. Over time, the process has been refining itself in subtle yet substantial ways. Even today, we see that, even in our greatest heroes. Peach…I know why she would go to such lengths to fight off Mario's reach."

He then walked over to his map and pulled down on the cord, and revealed a picture. I looked for a moment, and then the wind got hit out of me. I couldn't even comprehend what was in front of me. In the picture, there stood Peach, before she got pregnant, but she was dressed up in rags barely covering up her body. There was smoke everywhere in the building, but I could make out the out line of a Koopa in the room, and he was…straddling her. Mario stood outside of the door. Boswer pulled the cord back down.

"As you know, the illegal prostitution ring has begun to flourish with most of the Kingdom. This is due to a secret contest Mario has been holding. His officials have begun to run short and many are nearing death. According to Royal Law, whoever gives the Kingdom a new prince will become the new king and queen. All Mario would have to do was say he had mixed parents if their child turned out to be inhuman. Their love life has been a lie for the past 7 months. And if he gets her, it will always be that way."

I was sitting, my eyes wet with the pressure of awful secrets. Boswer sat down and said, "I've marked down all of the possible places she could be hiding, based on what I know of her. But I want to put an end to this once and for all. I won't have this stupid cat-and-mouse combat. Mario will be moving up toward a remote island region, and the castle will be floating there in 5 hours. I want you to alert the troops and corner him once he lands. Then take the Destiny Spear with you. You know what to do."

I eat a small amount of food with almost no taste, the last of what I gave to Peach. It won't be long before she realizes what I know. I couldn't even look her in the eye once I knew, and just knowing it made my partial meal restless inside my stomach. Down on the ocean ceiling, sunshine sparkled and the island rest neatly at the top. Within 12 minutes, the parachutes went down again and hit upon the surface of the jungle. Surrounded by a sea of green, I slashed my way across the ground. I couldn't even believe I was about to get away with this. Even now, I felt uncomfortable knowing that this operation would change the face of the Kingdom forever.


End file.
